Thursday, October 15, 2009

BG Painting - Jetsons 85 Backgrounds

Believe it or not, but this look was revolutionary in 1985.Why?Because before those images above, 80s cartoons looked like this:Everything was pink, purple and green - and had balloon highlights.It was the oddest color combination imaginable, yet that's just about all anyone did when I came into the business.

I can't even believe this stuff.So when they sent me to Taipei to supervise the layouts on some new Jetsons, I took it upon myself to also take over the BG and color department.When I first looked around the BG department, I thought it was weird to see Chinese painters painting all these sick American cartoon color combinations and I asked them to paint more like traditional Chinese and Asian colors. And to use some neutrals like grays and browns to balance the more primary, secondary colors.I also wanted her to use more limited palettes.Or to use related colors rather than having every object in a room be a screaming pink or purple.I had a bunch of fights with management trying to find somebody who would paint in a style I liked. One day they had an art show of all the Chinese artists' own work, and I found one artist (unfortunately whose name I can't remember) who had beautiful traditional Chinese paintings on display. I went to the head of the studio and asked him to put her on the show. After a fight, he agreed and I started working with her. I showed her Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom, some original Jetsons and some Disney cartoons and Italian fashion magazines and asked her to combine elements of those with her own style and these BGs are the first ones she came up with.I always liked cartoons with mood and here were some first attempts at it.

Purple kept sneaking in there but not so garishly as what I was used to seeing in the 80s.These were radically different than the other Jetsons being made at the same time in other countries and I stirred up some trouble back in LA because of it. Wanna hear that story? I gave Bill Hanna a great excuse to yell at someone.

The Cartoon School post was not only golden it's internet history. I'm watching vines creep and crack open those infested ivory towers right now. Administrative executives and corporate HR executives the size of cockroaches are scurry out of every crack. OMG! I just saw the registrar jump from the top floor and splat into the the dean's reserved parking spot. The dean backed out in such a whirl he rolled over her head twice. I just ordered the book. I am so ready to dumb down and be miserable.

What's great is you know to connect with people's roots. Cause that's where the passion grew. Then somehow the seedling sprout got covered up with manure made for pork belly futures. Executive domesticated cows can't administer such an idea in their half dead head. What cell on their spreadsheet aligns Chinese history with American cardboard color packaging? Dr. Science and John K. knows how to wrangle Synesthesia.

These were radically different than the other Jetsons being made at the same time in other countries and I stirred up some trouble back in LA because of it. Wanna hear that story? I gave Bill Hanna a great excuse to yell at someone.

I'm interested, as the 1970's & 1980’s (for animation) are two periods that are seldom talked about. Either some of the animators (such as you) are embarrassed to even mention what they had worked on during those two decades or the subject is only briefly mentioned in the history books that are available.

I hope you go into greater detail in your next post, such as the work environment at the time, the atmosphere, and so forth. Bill must have been a fascinating person to work for, without a doubt.

Also, if it isn’t too much trouble John, I was wondering if I could ask you a personal question that is related to…

Actually, I'll just leave my email adress here and let's see where it can go from there.

i remember a lot of cartoons having the rainbow wash backgrounds and just colors in general. rainbow washes and wonky shifting proportions bugged me when i was watching cartoons. i never knew why i felt weird watching then it was kind of subconscious, but looking back i remember the awkward grossed out feeling seeing those colors again.

I did not watch any cartoons in the 80s from the 80s. The last time I'd sat in front of a TV to try to watch a cartoon for many many years it was with one of my then-very young nieces. She was fond of something called GRAPE APE. I tried to watch it. I was horrified. I wanted to smash the TV screen. I left the room. I left the house. I never went back.

The garish, primary colours seem to be one of many chunks of evidence of something that has been bothering me a lot lately, and that's how children's programming seems to be 'talking down' to kids.Children are a lot more intelligent and discerning than people give them credit for; it seems the people in charge of shows for a younger audience think they are just little stupid people.As a result, it doesn't surprise me they saw fit to pump out gaudy backgrounds that are permeated with conflicting primary and secondary colours.Because apparently kids aren't going to be entertained by a show with riveting stories like the Jetsons unless it is a sensory assault, right?

Thanks, great! These really resonate with your post a while back about color in anime. I recently saw an old anime called "Night on the Galactic RailroadNight on the Galactic Railroad. It's 'just some old anime show' I think but I was amazed by the color sense. Thanks for encouraging us to think about this.

On that image with the girl walking her dog by the fire hydrant, it doesn't look like she fits into the background somehow... she almost looks like she was just pasted on it. All the other images look like they match up with the characters though. When I was scrolling through these images, that just stuck out like a sore thumb. Maybe its just me but does anyone else think so? And yes I wanna hear the story of Bill Hanna getting an excuse to yell at someone!

Y'know, for as much as you complain about producers and stuff, they ARE kind of necessary to the creative process. I mean, if they hadn't demanded all that purple, would you really have been motivated enough to mix up the backgrounds? It's kinda like the time an exec told Mike Maltese and Chuck Jones bullfight weren't funny, and then they made Bully for Bugs, as the exec had never been right yet.

its really disheartening for me to hear all the problems that people like you and bashki and even hanna barbera had in this industry,the only industry i ever wanted to work in but i'm kinda glad i never did. everything from content to commercial sponsorship to censorship and even arguing over color palettes is ridiculus.its all a symptom of the american mentality over the last thirty years,no originality, no substance, no soul, no fun! i worked at a internet based company doing corporate sales, i had to work under a manager who didnt understand how to use the company software,didnt understand the relationships i had with the clientelle, couldnt figure out how or why clients bought anything from us and failed at every attempt to promote sales. his solution? fire everyone including me, this was a college graduate who is still at this company today basically behaving like a delusional captain of the titanic.you are the cartoonist, the creative one, the experienced professional, why argue over the color palette? if it looks better, is funnier, better written, more people will watch, bigger ratings,more revenue from commercial sponsership,win win. why are so many people in power such jerk offs?

Garish colours are a real pet peeve of mine, too. The pink, purple and green syndrome was also at work in Disney's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", with hot orange added to the mix as well, most notably during the Festival of Fools celebration. I actually find sequences like that hard to look at, with all of those competing colours vibrating against each other.

"Pocahontas" had a similar problem, mostly with the hot burnt sienna flesh tones vibrating against the equally hot veridian green and turquoise of the forest. Although I believe the bigger problem in the case of this film is the use of colour outlines too close in tonal value to the areas of colour they contain, thus making all the surface details hard to read and furthering that "vibration" of adjacent colours.

The problem has gotten worse as the computer makes greater inroads, as all of the computerized colour rendering that has replaced cel paint is also now replacing the real paint on the backgrounds. What you now have is everybody painting with "light" rather than real pigment, thus adding to the garishness of it all.

By looking at the color differences of the Jetsons Pics you posted, the colors were all mixed up to a certain extent. But that was the eighties, and cartoons were bla at the time. I'm just asking, but did you fix the colors for the Jetsons during that time period you for Hanna-Barbera??

Excellent post as always, John.... It WOULD be excellent to know whyo Bill and Joe got angry at...BTW I was looking at the Judy jetson pictures you posted there, and I must say that I always thought that she was uh.."Hot".